A friend of mine visited with her family for a few days. She asked politely if she could use Windows Messenger on my machine, and I was happy to let her.
However I am now getting pop-up messages addressed to her!
How do I tell Windows Messenger she’s gone? (I don’t want to use it myself at all.)
I’m running Windows XP (home version).
Next time the answer is N.O.
Anyways, the easiet way is compleatly shut it down (right click, exit, Ctrl Alt Del and stop anything there) then go to My Computer, C, Program Files and find the directory called Messenger and change it’s name to something else. If it won’t let you change the name it’s still running. Once you change the name windows won’t be able to find it anymore and it’ll stop running.
Open Start Menu -> Programs -> Startup. If you see Messenger in there, right click and delete. That removes the startup link.
Alternatively, open Messenger and select Log-out. You should get a dialog box with options for credentials as well as “Run at startup”.
Untick and voila!
Oh, she’s a super person!
Now when I do what you suggest, I get the message that “changing this may alter how other programs run”.
Since I also use Microsoft Outlook, will that be affected?
I don’t see Windows Messenger in the list.
Nor, when I open it, do I get Log out (there is an Exit option).
If you are talking about the folder c:\program files\messenger then it’s pretty safe to rename it.
Personally, I would suggest you use one of the Microsoft supported ways of stopping this. You can follow my post above, or if you really hate it you should be able to open Control Panel, select Add/Remove Components. Select Windows Components and scroll to the bottom of the list. There should be an option for Windows Messenger with a size of 0.00 bytes. If you untick this, it will remove Messenger from your desktop which should stop it running too.
You aren’t 100% guaranteed to have this option though, depending on service pack level, windows version and phase of the moon. It was put in as a result of one of the many anti-trust kickings MS received.
No, you won’t hurt anything.
The thing about using the MS ways of disabling it is that if you restart it (like the OP did to begin with) you’re right back where you started. Trickly little bastard is worse then Real Player.